Gold Medal Beauty

My first memories of my mother are…my first memories. My hair hurts. My head hurt. Curlers – not greed - are the root of all evil. In my first baby photo, I had a total of - maybe - 7 hairs….all curled. From then until I turned 13, every picture in our family album my hair was either piled on my head full of pins and spray or…in curlers wrapped with toilet paper. Like all writers, I am the author of my own history….however, mine are confirmed by photographs.

My mother’s only education is beauty school. I was her best student. Interestingly, my mother never had much to say about my wardrobe. This was not part of her curriculum. Also, it was obvious early, that we were not going to share the same form. Tall and lean, my mother lived on days of fad diets and evenings of popcorn. Built my like my father’s mother, I, too am tall, but a large ass and overflowing bust made me a target at a young age. The teasing was endless; the moniker of “Triple B” (big butt, boobs and baby)still is stamped on the inside of my brain. This was the beginning of my love/hate relationship with my body.

Mom brought me to Montgomery Wards to buy my first bra. My mother was always easy to find in stores. It was just a matter of looking up. Over the racks of clothing and the selves of cosmetics, her hair was like a beacon high above steep cliffs of merchandize. I was lost in the storm of bras. They intimidated me with their jagged rows of hooks and suffocating thick fabric. Why would I want to add depth and weight to an area already thicker than my peers? Nothing fit. Nothing was creating the illusion of a flat chest as I had hoped. Mom’s impatience added volume to her suggestion of “I am just going to buy an ace bandage and roll you up in it,” causing all eyes to assess the problem of this pubescent child. To this day, shopping for bras, along with jeans and bathing suits, requires extended mental preparation, a glass of wine and a friend who is an excellent liar.

Mom always had a new diet for me…chalky shakes, cabbage soup and caffeine-packed candy. When shuffling through the pictures of my youth, I cannot seem to find that image that rendered her fat fear. I was athletic; I was thin. She would probably say, “…and you are welcome.”

Boys dated me to be near my mother. It is true. She was a beauty…still is. Her youthfulness was two fold. She not only looked young, she acted it. She laughed, she hugged, and she played. Mom was so entertained her children. At 67, she continues played with us…waterskiing, fishing, cards, rollerblading, dominos and trampoline jumping. Not too many years ago, I came home from work to find a note from my 10 year old son saying that he and grandma had gone around the block to McKennan Park to ice skate. There she was in the middle of the rink, doing one of those Olympic spins where the individual blurs into a personified tornado. She had on her fringed buckskin coat. It was – she was – poetry in motion, and not a hair moved or was out of place.

Last week, I swung by a local restaurant to say hi to my mom as she was meeting friends from high school. The husbands of her former classmates must have been green with envy. While their wives had aged into visual pictures of Midwest grandmothers with grey helmet hair and the “I give up outfit” of jean cropped pants and camp shirts, my mother looked – well – sexy.

Long before “Stacy’s mom had it going on” and terms such a MILF and cougar, there was my mother - tall, elegant, tanned, stylish and perfectly coiffed. However, her real beauty is that she has no idea of her stunning physicality. She is too busy serving a community, spoiling her family, playing, laughing and praying in her world….and that is truly beautiful.